


Through the Night

by cosmic_llin



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes an all-nighter is the only way to solve the problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raktajinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/gifts).



The chime that signalled the changing of the watch rang. It made B’Elanna jump, and she dropped her padd on the table with a gasp. The captain didn’t look up.

‘Captain?’ said B’Elanna.

No reply. B’Elanna didn’t even think she’d heard her.

‘Um... Captain?’ she tried again, waving a hand across the captain’s line of sight.

She blinked at that, but it still took her a moment to drag her eyes away from the padd she was reading and realise that B’Elanna was signalling to her.

‘... yes?’ she said.

‘The watch just changed,’ said B’Elanna. ‘We must have been sitting here all night!’

Captain Janeway tilted her head and frowned at B’Elanna. ‘Already?’

B’Elanna shrugged and gestured at the pile of coffee cups and padds that had taken over the little table in the captain’s ready room. At around midnight they had abandoned the desk for the relative comfort of the couch by the window, and at some point in the early hours B’Elanna had screwed up the courage to do as the captain did and take off her shoes to put her feet up on the furniture. Now she was sitting crosslegged, wedged into the corner, and when the captain slid to her feet and stretched like a lioness, braced against the couch, B’Elanna realised how stiff and achy her own limbs were and followed suit.

‘I feel like we’ve been staring at the same damn equations all night,’ said the captain. ‘Don’t you? I’m beginning to think this problem is unsolvable.’

‘No,’ said B’Elanna. ‘There’s got to be a way, we’re just not seeing it...’

She felt like throwing something, but instead she picked up her padd and scrolled with vehemence through the notes she’d made. The captain sighed and picked her own padd up again.

The door chimed.

‘Come in,’ called the captain, already half-lost in calculations.

A large bunch of pink and yellow flowers entered. Kes was somewhere beneath it.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Neelix said the replicator logs showed a lot of coffee coming in here last night. Still working on the fuel efficiency problem?’

‘The very same,’ the captain said. 'We've just got to get it fixed or we'll be dead in the water in a month...'

‘Well,’ said Kes, ‘my recommendation for both of your efficiency is that it’s time to refuel. Here, captain, I brought your flowers too.’

She passed the bunch over and the captain took them, burying her face in the blooms to breathe their scent.

‘Kes spoils me - she brings me fresh flowers for my ready room every week,’ she told B’Elanna. ‘Here, smell them.’

‘They’re a calming influence,’ said Kes. ‘And that means they’re a totally necessary extravagance.’

She grinned mischievously, and B’Elanna was envious for a moment at how easy she could be with the captain - but then here B’Elanna was in the ready room in her socks and shirt, with her jacket flung on the floor, smelling the captain’s flowers.

‘I’ll find somewhere for these,’ said Kes, taking them back again with a smile. She put a basket down on the table on top of the padds. ‘There’s breakfast in there.’

‘Great,’ said the captain, rummaging with one hand and retrieving a pastry without taking her eyes off her work.

‘Captain,’ said Kes over her shoulder as she arranged the flowers in a vase, ‘you’ve been working all night. Why don’t you take a few minutes and actually look at your breakfast while you’re eating it?’

The captain laughed. ‘All right, you win,’ she said. ‘I’ll get rid of all this’ - she gestured to the mess - ‘if you two set the table?’

While the captain took a precarious armful of half-empty coffee cups back to the replicator, B’Elanna helped Kes to unpack the basket, laying the napkins out in neat triangles and putting the little pots of jam at the centre of the table. Kes sat on the floor, so B’Elanna did too, and when she returned the captain joined them, sitting with her legs stretched out and her back against the couch.

B’Elanna helped herself to a pastry and tried to put fuel efficiency out of her mind.

* * *

‘Does that help?’ the captain asked, her upside-down face hovering over B’Elanna’s, framed by the hair she’d let out of the bun hours ago. ‘Perhaps it sends more blood to your brain?’

B’Elanna attempted a shrug, but it proved impossible while she was hanging backwards off the desk. Instead she slithered floorwards and accepted the captain’s assistance to stand up again.

‘I thought a different perspective might be useful,’ she said. ‘Turns out it just makes me dizzy.’

‘It was worth a try,’ said the captain cheerfully. ‘Do you mind if I run something past you? I think I might finally have something on what’s causing this anomaly...’

‘Sure,’ said B’Elanna, ‘but coffee first?’

She headed for the replicator without waiting for the captain’s reply, and added some pancakes since it was probably almost time for breakfast.

* * *

This time they were working in the captain’s quarters, because Ensign Wildman was on duty and Neelix was on an away mission, and it had fallen to the captain to babysit Naomi. It was long past Naomi’s bedtime and she had been firmly tucked in and kissed goodnight several times by both the captain and B’Elanna, but somehow here she was again, snuggled between them on the couch, sounding out the words she could see on their padds as they talked over the latest intractable engineering problem.

‘What’s antideuterium?’ she asked, when there was a brief pause in the flow of technical chatter.

‘It’s the stuff that helps make the ship go,’ said the captain.

‘How does it help make the ship go?’

‘We put it in the warp core and mix it up with normal deuterium, and that makes it so excited that it turns into energy, and we use that energy to make the warp drive work,’ said B’Elanna.

‘Huh.’ Naomi looked at B’Elanna. ‘Are you the chief engineer?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Can I be chief engineer someday?’

‘Maybe someday, if you study really hard and try your best,’ said the captain. ‘But you’d have to try extremely hard to be a better engineer than B’Elanna - she’s the best in Starfleet, you know.’

She winked at B’Elanna, who grinned back.

‘One thing chief engineers need is lots of sleep, so that their brains work fast,’ B’Elanna said. ‘Bedtime?’

‘You’re a chief engineer and you’re not sleeping,’ Naomi pointed out, but she let B’Elanna carry her back to bed anyway.

* * *

‘Ah, Seven,’ said the captain. ‘You weren’t regenerating, were you? We could use your opinion on this.’

Seven frowned. ‘Was there a artificial gravity malfunction in the ready room, captain?’

‘What? Oh... no, B’Elanna and I just don’t get around to tidying up after ourselves when we’re busy trying to solve a problem...’

B’Elanna looked around her at the padds, empty cups, items of clothing and engineering tools scattered around the room, and she had to admit that Seven had a point.

She stretched, got up and went over to the replicator. ‘Coffee, Seven?’ she said.

‘No,’ said Seven, ‘Thank you. I find that stimulants interfere with the proper functioning of my implants.’

‘Something else, then?’ said B’Elanna. ‘Some teakle juice? Neelix said you like it.’

‘Please.’

‘Now, Seven, take a look at this,’ said the captain, and she caught Seven up on the work so far while B’Elanna fetched the drinks.

Seven wouldn’t be persuaded to take her shoes off, but by morning she was at least sitting down.

* * *

‘Here, I brought you this,’ said the captain. ‘I thought you needed something if you’re going to be sitting and working all night...’

‘Ah - perfect!’ said B’Elanna. ‘My back’s been hell today.’

She let the captain ease her down into a sitting position propped against her new cushion, and she spread her work around her on the floor.

‘I guess we won’t be doing this as much once the little one arrives,’ the captain said. ‘You’ll have a different sort of all-nighter to contend with.’

B’Elanna shook her head. ‘No, we’ll still do this. Tom can take care of the baby when we have a technical problem we need to work through. Or I’ll bring her with me. She can get an early start on the basic principles.’

‘Think she’ll follow you into engineering?’

B’Elanna smiled. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I mind, so long as she’s happy. But it would be kind of nice.’ She wriggled and got herself comfy, resting a padd on top of her bump. ‘But right now we have a problem to solve. Did you get the results of the last diagnostic?’

The captain started to talk, and they worked all through the night until morning.


End file.
